Wednesday, June 17, 2009

If you are looking for a good romance story with a thrilling and sophisticated plot to read on a rainy day, "Cindy the Salesgirl" from DC's Secret Hearts #133 (January 1969) is definitely not for you! It is one of the shortest, most anti-climactic romance stories I have ever read --but, it has great art by one of my favorites, Winslow Mortimer! I have posted the entire story below, all three pages of it!

Before I realized how short the story was, I thought that maybe the woman was trying to play matchmaker for her son and was scouting out potentials at the local department store.

I thought that perhaps on the next page the plump woman's ulterior motive would become clearer...

Nope! It was just my imagination running away with me! Even Cindy looks shocked in that last panel that the story is over so quickly!

Though not the strongest piece of writing in history of romance comics, this little three-pager has a truly great layout. The vertical panels really help to break up the book and give Mortimer's figure work a chance to shine. I also really dig the coloring on the story. The changing background colors and contrasting text panels serve to highlight Cindy, and her splendid outfits.

There is a fair amount of information out there about Mortimer and his work on Superman and other various superhero covers, but I have found very little about his romance work and other work outside of comic books. He obviously had a natural affinity for drawing beautiful woman wearing fashionable clothing, and it really makes me wonder if he had prior experience in fashion illustration or something of that nature. As of yet, I haven't been able to find enough detailed information on him to make a solid statement about his inspirations, but with more digging perhaps I can get closer to that. One of my long-term goals is to do more research on Mortimer and make sure he gets the credit he deserves for his non-superhero work.